Not to put too fine a point on it all, but what’s going on along the US-Mexican border is unprecedented – youngsters are crossing into the US en masse and rather than running from Border Patrol in order to get further into the US, they are surrendering immediately upon arrival, just like the Cubans do under our unusually generous “dry foot” policy.

(Hint: Just tell the wingnuts that these kids are from Cuba, and maybe they’ll treat them as human beings.)

These children and their families are being taken advantage of by con artists. They are the tired, the poor – the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Tempest-tost wretched refuse, these children and their families are naive victims. Yet when they come here, our nativist right wing freaks out. Peak temper tantrum, hurling hateful invective not only at these Central American tweens, but at Obama, the liberals, and everyone else who doesn’t slap a Gadsen flag on their bumper and an eagle on their timeline.

It is a humanitarian crisis because these children come with nothing – have nothing – and because ours is a country of laws, we are not empowered simply to shove them back on a bus across the Mexico border. We have due process. We have laws. We have to detain them – humanely – while we process them all. That is how a 1st world country works, and that is what the law requires.

While the wingnuts with all that extra time on their hands accost kids on their way to the Y, other kids are dying. The border patrol is a law enforcement agency – not a refugee non-profit. The government is unprepared to deal with something like this, because of its massive scale and the unprecedented nature of what’s going on. Washington alternates between grandstanding and dithering.

By treating these kids as “invaders” and an “army”, you dehumanize them as well as any World War II-era cartoon of a bespectacled, slanty-eyed Tojo. By focusing on blaming Obama rather than trying to solve a legal and humanitarian crisis, the right wing contributes not only to the further erosion of whatever was left of its Latino support, but exposes itself for the craven practitioner of racialist, nativist politics that it’s become in recent years.

At the local forefront of this racial animus is hate radio WBEN, led by right-wing kook and operations director Tim Wenger.

Sometime on Tuesday, this appeared at WBEN’s scat-strewn Facebook page:

I won’t link to either one, but if you go to “Mad World News”, it seems that some nosy hausfrau encountered a busload of brown-skinned people getting off a school bus at a Wal-Mart in rural North Carolina. She tried to communicate with them, but these durn Messikinz didn’t speak any English. So, she simply leaped to the conclusion that, because one of them had managed to communicate with her that they were recent arrivals to America, they must be “illegals”. Not only that, but our brave Mexican-whisperers concluded that this busload of “invaders” was paying for its Wal-Mart goodies with “EBT cards”; welfare handouts.

They weren’t paying with welfare cards. Their wages are paid to rechargeable debit cards, which they used to buy items for themselves at Wal-Mart in rural North Carolina.

They weren’t on a government bus, but were instead being transported by their employer to the Wal-Mart for a shopping trip.

But, you know, brown people on a bus using plastic at a Wal-Mart. Because right wingers instinctively think the worst of everyone and everything, these had to be (what else?) “illegal” “invaders” spending welfare EBT cards thanks to Obama inviting them to the US.

In the meantime, the administration and Democrats will try to find a humane and legal solution to this problem while the Republicans continue to antagonize Latino voters and Millenials. In the meantime, sane and rational people will call out wildly horrible local hate radio for the embarrassment it is.

Not every problem is one that needs to be solved with hatred and guns.

“I’m not a birther, I’m an American,” he declared. He said he was “fed up” with Obama after the attack and murder of four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. He said the president is not telling the truth about what happened and that Obama defies basic American precepts and has weakened the country.

“For that reason, I don’t believe he is an American. I don’t think he fosters the American ideals,” Paladino said. “I could care less where Obama was born. I don’t feel he is an American with American values doing the best for America.”

CAN’T BELIEVE SNOPES VERIFIED THIS AS TRUE, SINCE THEY TEND TO DENY ANY OTHER FACTS ABOUT HIM.

Obamas authentic birth certificate from Coast Memorial Hospital , in Mombasa , KENYA . Now the task is to get the courts to authenticate it and then kick Obama out of office, something they are loathe to do.

Here it is! The document we have been waiting for! Now if only SOMEONE in Congress or the Supreme Court will act on this!

This is what Obama has spent almost $2M (so far) to hide.

Here’s a close-up of the top of the document where you can plainly read his name and his parent’s names, etc..

A British history buff was asked if he could find out who the colonial registrar was for Mombasa in 1961.

After only a few minutes of research, he called back and said “Sir Edward F. Lavender Note the same name near the bottom of the photo above.

Source(s): Kenya Dominion Record 4667 Australian library.”

And here is a close-up of the bottom of the document where you can read “Coast Providenceï¿½of Kenya ” and the…

It goes on like that for quite some time; it’s 1,220 words long. That’s how “not a birther” Carl Paladino is. That’s the city’s singular paper merely transcribing that Carl says he’s not a birther, but on October 15th he was emailing a veritable Orly Taitz-worthy birther tome to his copious email recipient list. Why is this, you think? Why deny what he quite clearly is? Bad for business? Here’s what Thrifty has to say about it:

Thrifty Car Rental does not condone the placement of political materials on our corporate rental cars nor is it associated with any particular political position. The alleged incident involves a licensee of ours, acting as an independent business operation. We have been assured that the situation has been rectified.

We are meant uncritically to believe that it wasn’t until the September 11th Benghazi attack that Carl Paladino became “fed up” with President Obama. Here’s a gem from February 2012:

Not only did Paladino circulate the above-quoted birther nonsense in mid-October, but he found and shared the information to his “friends” in August, well before the attack in Benghazi:

Let’s not forget those heady days in 2009 – after Obama’s election, and before Paladino’s “values” became widely known. There was this (partial scan):

Also in 2009, early birther-movement-adopter Paladino forwarded to his large list of email followers a trope called “meet the Soetoros“, to further indicate that Obama is an Indo-Kenyan candidate.

Carl Paladino has every right to use “America” as many times as possible in any sentence he concocts, and he’s wholly entitled to believe whatever nonsense he peddles. But when he makes a claim about not being a birther, perhaps we should examine whether that’s true or not. Again:

For that reason, I don’t believe he is an American. I don’t think he fosters the American ideals,” Paladino said. “I could care less where Obama was born. I don’t feel he is an American with American values doing the best for America.

“I’m not a birther, I’m an American,” he declared. He said he was “fed up” with Obama after the attack and murder of four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. He said the president is not telling the truth about what happened and that Obama defies basic American precepts and has weakened the country.

“For that reason, I don’t believe he is an American. I don’t think he fosters the American ideals,” Paladino said. “I could care less where Obama was born. I don’t feel he is an American with American values doing the best for America.”

CAN’T BELIEVE SNOPES VERIFIED THIS AS TRUE, SINCE THEY TEND TO DENY ANY OTHER FACTS ABOUT HIM.

Obamas authentic birth certificate from Coast Memorial Hospital , in Mombasa , KENYA . Now the task is to get the courts to authenticate it and then kick Obama out of office, something they are loathe to do.

Here it is! The document we have been waiting for! Now if only SOMEONE in Congress or the Supreme Court will act on this!

This is what Obama has spent almost $2M (so far) to hide.

Here’s a close-up of the top of the document where you can plainly read his name and his parent’s names, etc..

A British history buff was asked if he could find out who the colonial registrar was for Mombasa in 1961.

After only a few minutes of research, he called back and said “Sir Edward F. Lavender Note the same name near the bottom of the photo above.

Source(s): Kenya Dominion Record 4667 Australian library.”

And here is a close-up of the bottom of the document where you can read “Coast Providenceï¿½of Kenya ” and the…

It goes on like that for quite some time; it’s 1,220 words long. That’s how “not a birther” Carl Paladino is. That’s the city’s singular paper merely transcribing that Carl says he’s not a birther, but on October 15th he was emailing a veritable Orly Taitz-worthy birther tome to his copious email recipient list. Why is this, you think? Why deny what he quite clearly is? Bad for business? Here’s what Thrifty has to say about it:

Thrifty Car Rental does not condone the placement of political materials on our corporate rental cars nor is it associated with any particular political position. The alleged incident involves a licensee of ours, acting as an independent business operation. We have been assured that the situation has been rectified.

We are meant uncritically to believe that it wasn’t until the September 11th Benghazi attack that Carl Paladino became “fed up” with President Obama. Here’s a gem from February 2012:

Not only did Paladino circulate the above-quoted birther nonsense in mid-October, but he found and shared the information to his “friends” in August, well before the attack in Benghazi:

Let’s not forget those heady days in 2009 – after Obama’s election, and before Paladino’s “values” became widely known. There was this (partial scan):

Also in 2009, early birther-movement-adopter Paladino forwarded to his large list of email followers a trope called “meet the Soetoros“, to further indicate that Obama is an Indo-Kenyan candidate.

Carl Paladino has every right to use “America” as many times as possible in any sentence he concocts, and he’s wholly entitled to believe whatever nonsense he peddles. But when he makes a claim about not being a birther, perhaps we should examine whether that’s true or not. Again:

For that reason, I don’t believe he is an American. I don’t think he fosters the American ideals,” Paladino said. “I could care less where Obama was born. I don’t feel he is an American with American values doing the best for America.

I watched the media tear Carl apart, personally and professionally, exposing deeply personal information, some true and some untrue. Attacks on his character were fast and furious and kept coming. The campaign manager said it was the worst media beating he had ever witnessed. Carl said, “Is that all they’ve got?”…

…and I learned about Strength.

Yes, stength. And persistent, courageous, etc. – it all reads like something a brainwashed cult follower would write about their dear leader. But the reality is uglier.

One Paladino supporter shouted at one of Calvo-Torres’ supporters, “Why don’t you go back to the West Side…You don’t even speak English.” Some of Calvo-Torres’ marchers who heard this were just kids. Calvo-Torres confronted Paladino and Rus Thompson over the incident.

“Mr. Paladino called me ‘honey’ twice as he apologized, telling me, ‘Honey, I’m sorry. But you know, I can’t control everyone who supports me,” Calvo-Torres said. “I told him that these people are reflective of his campaign and he needs to take responsibility for them.”

So, there you have it.

I can’t figure out whether it’s inspiring, courageous, motivating, determined, strong, or persistent for Paladino to call Western New York’s only Latina judge “honey”, but I’m sure cowardly Caputo’s derivative talking duck can explain all of it.

…when Watertown resident Lorraine Clement started crediting Gov. David A. Paterson for bending the Legislature to his will through the budget extenders, Mr. Paladino didn’t stop himself.

“I’m telling you that Paterson is not your friend,” he told Mrs. Clement. “Paterson is a drug addict. All right? He’s been a drug addict his entire life.”

He then motioned in my direction.

“I’m just speaking – well I don’t care. Say it.”

Russ Thompson, a Buffalo area tea party organizer who was traveling with Mr. Paladino, is the voice that suggests the comment should be off the record.

But to his credit, Paladino campaign manager Michael Caputo understands that something you say with a camera running, with a voice recorder taping, with media present and with a dozen witnesses can’t really be off the record.

Doubling down on the idiocy, Paladino’s campaign manager refused to issue an apology. It would probably be seen as a sign of weakness were they to do what’s right. Instead, it’s important that they look like they have big macho balls. So, this:

On Wednesday at a meeting in Watertown, Carl Paladino referred to Gov. David Paterson as a drug addict. Carl was referring to the Governor’s admitted use of cocaine, a highly addictive narcotic that ruins lives. As anyone who ever fought to help a habitual cocaine user will tell you, once you are an addict, you are always an addict. It is a constant fight to stay clean and productive in daily life.

Illegal drug abuse is not a small issue and cocaine abuse is one of the most troubling addictions. If the Governor is no longer using cocaine, then good for him, good for his family and good for the State of New York. But once you are an addict, you are always an addict. And if the Albany ruling elite is okay with present or past drug use among their political leaders, they need to know that the vast majority of New York is not.

Unlike any other candidate for Governor or our present chief executive, Carl Paladino has never used marijuana, cocaine or any other illegal drug. The Office of the Governor is no place for drug abusers – and Carl is not one of them.

Carl is not politically correct. Carl tells it like it is. And if this is uncomfortable talk for the Albany crowd, they should buckle their seat belts because this will not be the last offense of their delicate sensibilities.

Paladino is no paragon of morality, we’ve learned. The attempt to keep this exchange “off the record” is as clumsy as the statement itself, and the subsequent description of Paterson as an “addict” when there is no evidence whatsoever of that fact, and ought frankly be libel.

Referring to common human decency and telling the truth as “political correctness” is the jumping of the rhetorical shark for the Paladino crew. Doubling down on stupid statements may be the only thing they have left, but an apology would be more appropriate in polite society.

I think the Paladino campaign is a distillation of everything that is wrong with contemporary politics.

Speaking of the president, Obama has delivered more than 300 speeches since he took office. Remember when you had to agonize for weeks just to write one term paper?

More than 130 of those speeches have been about his controversial health care plan. Death panel questions aside, aren’t we approaching overkill? No one has a more polished delivery, but constant appearances can dissipate the impact of any presidential speech.

Personally, I like hearing directly from the President of the United States, and I strongly doubt that all 300 of those speeches were given to the entire country. This “Obama’s too overexposed” concern trolling is anti-intellectualism and little else. I like for the President to have to explain and persuade.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

No longer let it be said that patent idiocy and foolishness is relegated to the deep, dark recesses of World Net Daily dot com or Free Republic dot com, and similar peddlers of teh dumb.

JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

Lowest common denominator, go for the people who are ignorant and proud.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head”. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

Starbuck says that the primary results reveal that the Republicans have shunned the Christianist ultra-right wing of the Republican Party by picking McCain. The problem is that McCain won by default, as the more conservative so-called “values voters” split between Huckabee and Romney (and others). (Also, in my analysis in the post to which he’s referring, I didn’t merely hone in on the Christianists – I also pointedly referred to the anti-intellectual, anti-thought dogma now controlling that party.)

Like I said before, if the GOP continues down that dumb path, Sarah Palin is a lock – she is the uberdumb, the poster child for the uneducated and incurious who spout Hannityesque, Limbaughesque talking points by rote, and consider that all the learnin’ and thinkin’ they need. You betcha.